COMPANY SLAMS N5.9BN SUIT ON UBA FOR WRONGLY FREEZING ITS ACCOUNT

A Finance Advisory Company, Treasure Capital and Trusts Limited alleged to have suffered economic misfortune due to the unjustifiable freezing of its bank accounts in ten commercial banks by a court order wrongly obtained by the United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA’s MD pictured above) against the company has slammed a N5.9 billion suit on the bank.

In a statement of claim filed before a Federal High Court in Lagos by Barrister Oluremi Ogunde (SAN) on behalf of Treasure Capital and Trusts Company, what triggered off the current legal hostility started sometime in April 2011 when United Bank for Africa Plc instituted a civil action against the company and other parties at the Federal High Court in Lagos, in United Bank for Africa Plc versus Mobil Workers Multipurpose Cooperative Limited and four others.

UBA Plc’s specific claim against Treasure Capital and Trust Limited, who was fourth defendant in the suit, was the demand to be paid the sum of N231, 500,000 being outstanding sum due and unpaid by the company, which was alleged to have been invested by the bank with the company out of the sum advanced by the bank to Multipurpose Cooperative Society Limited and interest at the rate of 22.5 per cent from 15 April, 2011 till judgement and till final liquidation.

Thereafter UBA filed an application before the court dated 9 June 2011, urging the court to freeze the assets of the company including all funds standing to the credit of the company in ten commercial banks.

The bank gave an undertaking to indemnify the company in damages if it turns out that the application seeking the order of the court to freeze the account ought not to have been made in the first place.

While acceding to the request of the bank, the court directed the ten banks to take legal possession of all the sums of money and negotiable instruments standing to the credit of the company, keep same in an interest yielding account in the name of the Chief Registrar of the court as trustees of same until the debt has been paid. The order of the court was also served on various financial institutions with whom the company had business at that time.

Upon service of the order on the company, the company filed an application to discharge or vacate the order but the bank opposed the application, hence the court refused to vacate the order.

However, the company on the 26 October, 2011 filed an application to strike out its name from the suit on the ground that the bank’s suit disclosed no reasonable cause of action against it and that if there was any cause of action at all against the company, such cause of action was outside the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court.